 Well, this video is a bit different for my channel. It's a day in the life of an artist. My daughter-in-law was in town a while back and she saw, she couldn't believe how hard I worked as an artist. So she said, why don't I just film you all day and you can make a video showing other people what you do in the studio behind the scenes. So welcome and I hope you enjoy this presentation. So my day usually starts at the crack of dawn. I love getting up early. Of course getting a cup of coffee. It is Monet Cafe, right? And I absolutely love taking a walk outside. I see my little sweet kitty Lucille. Oh, what a faithful kitty she's been with us through floods and tragedies and but you know it's a quaint and simple place that we live but there's just beauty everywhere. I don't care what corner of the world you're in. We can find some beauty around us and I love the little road by the cow pasture next door to our property. The cows aren't mine but I feel like they're mine and I love visiting them and I love snapping some shots and getting some inspiration to start the day. And this is the little farmhouse that we renovated after the flooding of our home. It's still not our permanent home but I've set up shop in that little corner on the back of the house right there. We do live on a very busy road so it's a little noisy but we make it work and we're still not finished. The back porch isn't even finished and on this particular day I was working from my dining room table because my studio was such a mess from so many other projects and on this particular date in time I was working on a project for my Patreon page, a project called 12 Days of Healing. It was right in the midst of the whole COVID-19 pandemic which I'm actually we're still kind of in right now but this is my like again my point little farmhouse and this is my studio just a 10 by 13 room that I actually have a video on when I was designing the studio and I do have to focus on staying very organized since the studio is so small but I'll look at that view out my window. I do have that great view but I know a lot of you guys can relate to that. Many of you are doing what I used to do working just from a kitchen table or in the corner of a dining room you know wherever you can find so so once again I'm just kind of giving you a brief little tour of things. I have a lot of shelves to hold artwork and lots of different ways that I store pastel artwork and I have a lot of videos on sharing practical ways to keep up and manage this beautiful addiction that we have as artists. Again look at that beautiful pink sky out my window. So again a quick little tour of the studio this is usually how I start my day well not giving a tour but just getting started early in the mornings and for much of this video you will see my the footage from my daughter-in-law who was filming me throughout this day and it gives a lot of behind-the-scenes tips and things I don't normally share in my videos so hope you enjoy. Doing now Susan. Oh wait first of all first of all I gotta brush my hair. I am time to get to work. Alright so after making breakfast having my coffee it's time to get the day started. Alright time to get this painting. I got a good photo of it already needs to be uploaded to social media and also to sites where I sell prints and the video has got to be made of the process to share on my Patreon page, Facebook and Instagram and YouTube. It's gotta go on YouTube. Alright let's get this painting stored and put away. What I'm doing now is actually I'm speeding this up of course you guys don't want to see the slow version of this is I'm cutting my trimming my painting that I had done on a larger piece of pastel matte and I know I can still use the other side of that so I'm cutting it I'll have you know a little bit of the surface to use for another painting and just getting it trimmed and I like to trim it so that I'm not so tight on the edges giving some flexibility with framing and and then I'll temporarily store this typically until I have enough paintings to do more permanent storage notebook system storing my pastels some of them aren't adhered yet and actually for the little painting that I had finished I had forgotten I was displaying them all all 12 of them before I do the temporary storage for my Patreon page and we were all doing 12 days of painting consecutively and it was a lot of fun and here's a quick little flip through of the notebook and basically this system just works well for me practically so that I have a temporary storage place before I store them more permanently in clear bags and I have videos on that whole process as well and now it's time to do more with the painting that I finished today very quickly I'm just showing here the actual clear bags that I use I now order from a company called clearbags.com super easy to find them and again I have videos on the whole process I usually cut a piece of foam core board just a little bit smaller than the painting I include it behind the painting in the clear bag I'm explaining here how I move things from my temporary storage to my clear bags and it's a pretty good system I like it. Now of course a very important part of this so that the art gets to you guys and people in the online social media world is to get a good photo of your artwork and I used to use a Canon SLR camera that I liked a lot until I got this awesome new iPhone Pro Max 11 Pro Max camera that was actually possible because of my patrons support from my patreon page so thank you guys and this awesome light my ring light which makes it great for for getting good lighting now I'm going to make another video on some photography tips for you guys to get good little little tips and tricks and simple things that you can do to get better images of your artwork but for now I just thought you guys might like to see the behind the scenes of sometimes how I get my my images also natural lighting is one of the best lighting sources to use all right so now once I get a good photo it's time to upload it to the computer okay so the next thing to do after you get a photo of your artwork is to I get in here and I do a lot of tweaking there's all these different things you can do with regards to brightness contrast levels curves exposure don't be intimidated by all that in Photoshop all this stuff is very learnable and then I crop it before the crop it looked like this so I go in and I crop the image and then once I get the image as close to what I see the original image like it's time to save this image and share it on all the different social medias you guys know all about that you've got to share it on Instagram you've got to share it on Facebook and in Facebook you know as an artist it's best to go ahead and share it in all the places that's going to get you the most exposure so in Facebook you may have your own art page which I do the art of Susan Jenkins different art groups that you're in maybe your own personal profile page on Facebook and then also share it on Instagram with all the appropriate hashtags maybe create a story from it share it on my Patreon page or actually the next process will be making the video and all of this happens with just one painting it it begins with the painting and recording it for the video and it ends with getting it all shared the video and the photo to everything and then I'll also share it sometimes to my sites that make prints and products sometimes I'll make a blog post out of the painting and oh my gosh too many other things to mention that I had to literally make a sheet up here that goes through all of the different processes that a painting goes through to get it out into the public so as you can see now in my day it's almost 10 o'clock and I've already been up painting made breakfast for my husband I've been outside got some good photos read my Bible get some good inspiration outdoors it's a beautiful day today and it's still time to get to work I've got to now I will begin now that I've gotten a good image of or a high resolution image of the painting I'm going to start editing the video and getting all of that ready to share with the artistic world I also thought it might be nice if I share with you how I store my paintings in the virtual world not only do you have to store them physically in some sort of system I have to keep them on my computer in a easy way to find them again and to categorize them so this might help you guys a little bit in knowing how I do that here's what I do I save it I have an art folder and then I have a painting folder you want to have a good system on your computer or system in general of keeping your paintings organized and I can actually go into that folder and go to this painting and go to get info and it'll have the date that I uploaded it and everything on here where's the date created but I can add anything else I would like to in the comments I can add for example the pastels that I use for this I'll probably remember but this is a great little section for you to include extra information about your painting so that if somebody buys it you know maybe you can tell them oh this was when I was at this particular place or you know it's kind of neat to have more more information the better all right which how many cups of cups of coffee did you have oh I've already had two early this morning and then while I was painting and now definitely time for another cup of coffee while I still have yet to create a video from the painting I completed that morning I knew I needed to go ahead and get ahead of myself and do another one of the small paintings I was doing in the 12 days of healing challenge so now I'm just looking at reference images to get inspired and to begin my next painting all right so it's 1.57 okay we just had lunch yep gotta put the hair out it's something I've just had to remember to do because I've had too many videos where I have these little hairs in front of the painting all right now it's officially time to get started and Jackson is ready too oh Jackson yeah he's ready and now the process of yet another painting starts and of course I'm recording it and this actual video is on the Monet Cafe YouTube channel so you can see the entire video and the finished painting on that video but again it's just another part of the day and after this painting it's time to do some prep work for family coming over all right so tell us a little bit about what's going on now after you're done sort of with your painting time for the art apron to become a cooking apron I'm defrosting chicken hot season cleaning the furniture from can any other pastel artists relate to this you get pastel dust everywhere the worst is my light switch in my art studio let's go see if it's dirty maybe that one too now that was oh there's some pastel dust on the wall it's when you try now it's not too bad actually I can't believe it I probably cleaned it already but this is usually covered in pastel dust I did have something happen now after you're done cooking it's two no three o'clock three o'clock I definitely need to edit the video and upload it the painting that I started yesterday and I finished this morning I have all of the footage I think I've already I'm not even sure if I've airdropped it from my phone to my computer but I have to do that edit it in iMovie and um then upload it which all of that takes a couple hours at least and then upload it to YouTube and share it everywhere on social media so gotta get to that and then I'll need to finish that painting and do the same thing all over again while you're cooking um tell us a little bit of the reason why you decided to make this video with you know behind the well scene sort of you know showing how it is to be an artist and also leave the rest of your life and cook and do all that I actually didn't think about it until you recommended which but then I thought you know that's a great idea because I have a tendency to just show all of the art stuff and also it's hard to film myself I'm busy and so it's very sweet of you to do this and then I realized too uh I think other artists or uh aspiring artists would like to see behind the scenes and how you often do have to just it's not like you just go to a studio paint you get it all done and come home often you have to multitask and do a lot of stuff all at the same time like I do especially if your studio's in the house like mine which is very convenient because I can still do all the things I normally do but it's a juggling act that's for sure so but I I'm thankful for this video because I think a lot of um artists will uh appreciate seeing what it takes and it's a lot it really is a lot some of them yeah I don't think they know exactly that you have to leave your life do the errands cook take care of yourself exactly and I even look at other artists now with new eyes because of what I have to do I see the artist like Marla Baguetta the other day who just did a live video presentation and I watch her and as flawless and as wonderful as it all seems I know what some of the things that she had to do behind the scenes it doesn't just come together and I think and I think another thing artists would appreciate is we have a tendency to maybe idolize some people who are doing this and not realize that they have the same struggles the same sometimes insecurities about art and uh and it's a lot of work it doesn't just happen like you see on the video all the time there's many paintings you never see and that's with all artists you know that's not just me that's a lot often forget to do and something I don't like to do is sign my paintings I know that sounds kind of silly but I'm left-handed and I write like this I don't paint like that but just to do my my that's why I do my initials just to do my initials is uh sometimes a little challenging but I make it as simple as possible all right with that done let's get this one ready to photograph and do the same thing I love again so here we go with the same process again and you know it may seem like wow don't you just get tired of doing all of this but hey it's awesome to be an artist it is a lot of work but if you love it and you're a creative person and you're getting to do the thing that you love all of the other extra effort and work is so worth it so I don't discourage this video is not meant to be a discouragement I should say and I hope I don't scare any artist away but I will say a lot of the things that have helped me and blessed me have come in handy with my channel and my art business is the fact that I majored in graphic design knowing some of the things about computer computer editing and photoshop and I happen to love movie editing so that all adds into some of the fun and and actually a real benefit we're going to go through the process of editing a video and all that tell us a little bit about what programs you use and okay while this um while these files are uploading for the painting that I just did I actually I still have to upload the files from the painting I finished this morning but while it's uploading um let me show you the program that I use I use iMovie there are other um computer that's when I gave all my patrons a message there are other computer uh programs you can use um such as Final Cut uh that are really super editing programs but you know iMovie is awesome and it's really all that you need or all that I need every video I've ever done has been with uh iMovie and so it's really not all that hard I'll show you just how easy it is when you have an empty um iMovie film strip here that's just empty no no clips are in it I literally just go to my finder my little finder guy I go to my desktop I go to um my folder that would have my video like well right now it's these let's just go ahead and do these since they're right now they popped up for my download folder um you highlight all the ones you want and you can do them individually you don't have to do them all as a group and you just drag them down into iMovie and uh because I do voiceovers I almost the reason I do voiceovers I've shared this many times is my house is often very active I can't count on it being quiet for me to talk and it's so small that you hear everything so it's just become easier for me to just paint and then do the voiceover when I can find that time so I always go in and take the sound down on every single clip and then I do a voiceover so when I start to edit this video I you know guys I often too put an intro picture at the beginning this one's not touched up yet in Photoshop but what I would do is I would put this at the beginning and um right now it's it's not cropped right so I can make it go where I want it to go I could start it here and then end it down here like that and then now when I play it it will play like that that's not too bad actually and then I can add a title to it if I want right here I can say painting while doing everything I'm kidding so blah blah blah and then you can do different things with this too you can you can change the font you can this has a little outline on it right now I don't really like that outline so I take it away I could sometimes I use this kind of fun font right oh that's too big though I'll pick here's another one I like let's see that one yeah um and then uh I can add the music I go to another file where I go to my documents to art to Monet Café to YouTube music because you cannot use music that has a copyright YouTube has all these little music files that I know I'm safe with I don't often go and buy other songs or try other things so that song sounds good um I'll put it down here and then all of a sudden we have the beginning to a video and I can hear I'll do it big screen so you can see we can play it and go big screen and there's your movie I do have more editing to do that so now what I'll be doing is just clipping this up making sure there's not wasted time I try to look out for you guys I I give you what I think might interest you but there's no sense in boring you with me kind of looking for pastel you know or whatever so this should be a fun video I can't wait to make it for you and I gotta make that other one too and then we gotta have dinner all right so I'm gonna look at the time it's uh 327 right now now I thought this was interesting we set up my iPhone on time lapse mode so you could see the whole editing process of one video done in just a few seconds so it is a lot of work I don't mean to discourage anyone if you'd like to start a YouTube channel but I'll let you know it is definitely a lot of work and it definitely helps to have some of the knowledge of computer or movie editing and software programs so to have a successful channel all right so it took you exactly 30 minutes oh to edit that little video and it's four o'clock what's interesting is that was a video that I decided to do a little speed video just for the YouTube channel I still have to go back and edit this video now for my patrons I usually do it in the opposite order I make the patron first and then the other one but I thought I'd go ahead and do the speed one so I still have to make another voiceover longer editing for my patrons because they're worth it um but now I have to upload this uh condense it first with a program that I use upload it to YouTube and then share it all over the place so I got about 30 minutes to do that I guess so I better get busy so I see that you have here a computer a Mac computer and also you're using a different screen why is that this is the MacBook Pro it's the I guess you could call it the Mac daddy Mac it's got a lot of storage on it it's very fast it has a good processor and a lot of RAM 16 giga RAM but I needed the extra space but also too it's got a nice size I think this is the this is a 17 inch monitor I'm not positive on that but um it didn't matter to me I mean I really probably could have gotten a smaller monitor uh or or screen I should say viewing screen but I know I have this um large HP monitor I don't remember the model number I got it at Costco for about $200 and it just makes it so much easier for me to see my paintings uh the resolution is really good so it's a really awesome way for me to work rather than just I mean look at that difference I mean even you can see this looks more faded out than this monitor you know so this is really good and um you know being it uh that it is a artistic type of thing that I'm editing I need the screen to be right and I need to be able to see it good so that's why I decided to get a large monitor it's really great and this way you got a different uh keyboard and the mouse and everything so you don't have to yes it's just easier I you know I've uh been using this system for so long also too my my laptop computer doesn't fit here as good it fits up here better and also too when you buy the new MacBook Pro they don't have any external ports they don't even have my old Mac used to have a uh an HD card port the new Macs just so you know if you're thinking of getting one um you're gonna have to get one of these external things if you have external things to plug into it um it's uh an adapter basically and I have to plug this into my Mac and then all of these other things my microphone my monitor um even the little thing for my mouse and my keyboard goes in here um so it's uh it's doing a lot it's a very uh busy computer right now so but anyway yeah so this system really does work for me quite well I'm a granite I do like this one this watermelon is also very good so if you want to make um a gift for Susan Starbucks gift cards and flowers I don't know why I mentioned this with the sparkling water art supply and of course the day would not be complete without at least three or four sessions of playing catch with Jackson my little sidekick art studio mascot you know it's funny I'm throwing with my left arm I'm not left-handed in sports I am in painting but I have a rotator cuff injury in my right shoulder and man it bums me not being able to throw the ball really well all right back to work I'm just getting ready for dinner family coming over while I still have plenty of work to do with movie editing you know processing uploading all of that good stuff I knew I better get my dining room cleared out for my family coming over later and uh you know that's the challenge when your dining room table doubles as your art table and you win me so happy together all right it is 526 and you finally uploaded the video online what's next yes I got the video uploaded um called let's paint a poppy field in case you want to search it huh oh yeah let me um let me refresh it so we get to the or let me start at the beginning this is called let's paint a poppy field in soft pastels so there's a lot more benefits to be a patron instead of just a follower in yeah we talked about some competitions and awards and stuff prizes that you give to your patrons can you tell us more why is it more beneficial to be a patron what what do you get exclusively on your patreon page that's a great question you know originally it started out I wasn't even going to start a patreon page because I knew how much work all of this requires and I know the type of person I am I wouldn't want somebody paying extra to me unless I was providing them more the beautiful thing is that so many of the patrons are literally just paying for the support of it I know that I can tell that you just have a good heart you know how much I put into Monay cafe but I still want to provide more so what I do for my patrons is um I would say more than 50 percent of the time I create a video that has more content for my patrons this particular one is on both you get more voiceovers you get more real time in the video footage you get the reference image almost always to work from and I also have contests I'm doing a contest right now that has to do with the 12 days of healing I've done contest where I gave away original paintings I've done that I think three times where someone got one of my original paintings I'm going to be having some contest to give away the Monay cafe bracelet I'm not wearing that one today and also you get access to my my special group on Facebook for my patrons it's called Susan Jenkins Patreon group so that's where you can only access it if you're a patron if you're a patron it's a private group so only my patrons can be in that group and when you're in that group you can share with my other patrons I'm in there I share all my videos but you can get that from the Patreon page but you can communicate with each other you can ask me more questions I'm involved with that more than the Monay cafe group because that group that I started because of the Monay cafe channel has almost 10,000 members in it it's a beautiful group it's wonderful and everybody's helping each other but it's harder for me to see your painting if you're one of my patrons I can give you a little bit more attention you can ask me more questions um and you often advise you're able to give more advice exactly it's again it's a little bit more intimate I'm now going to be starting oh before that also too there's some patrons who aren't on Facebook so I'm now starting these google albums where when I have a thing like my 12 days of healing we can all put our photos in the google albums so even if you're not on facebook I have ways that you can share together so um but my patrons really I say it all the time they bless me so much just to think that you guys are supporting me is I just it's so beautiful to me so anyway but yeah patrons it's a special group um special people and they do get extra which is good this is actually me going through some of my patrons artwork in the google album something I love to do and doing what is really I love doing this I mean it's another time consuming thing but it's a blessing to me now I'm just going through on my patreon page specifically the share google album and my patreon group in facebook where I can see what my patrons post and what they're doing and I'm really loving seeing all of the paintings from the 12 days of healing and I love when I scroll down and I see new new posts what people have posted um Gisella just posted a new little piggy painting oh my gosh these flowers from Bonnie she did the pot of flowers we've got Brigitte Brigitte painted from the beach scene Cara did the marsh scene Linda did the pair so once I wrap that up I love to communicate with you guys then I think I'm gonna finish for the day but I still didn't get one of the videos uploaded so tomorrow I got to get back at it again to upload the video with the painting I did yesterday actually and then do another painting and start this whole day process all over again but for now I'm gonna go make dinner and enjoy my family we went through three different kinds of drinks we went from coffee to water vitamin water sparkling water and now it's 545 and we just switched so glass of wine huh now I have three kinds yes she's three kinds the end of two other bottles all right cheers mone cafe end of a long day cheers and maybe we'll record some more of dinner families coming over for dinner meet the family yeah we have to conclude the day somehow so yes okay let me say something this is uh one of my best pieces of art right here I have three of them that are my favorite pieces that's my Bryson who's actually married to the voice you're hearing behind the camera sweet Lorena my daughter-in-law who's been recording this to make this video my son met her during a mission trip to Romania talk about a long distance relationship she got a scholarship to the states for her piano skills and she is just a beautiful soul such a sweet believer in the lord and she's an artist too look at these lovely paintings she has a real talent for painting small I'm amazed at what she can create on such a tiny little surface so I just wanted to thank her for the idea and the work to put this together so after that long day we were able to have a little family time with some good food fellowship and I am just more blessed than I can express and of course there's my sweet husband Todd who is he says he's fighting the coronavirus who puts up with all my crazy art career that I love to share with all of you so the day usually ends exactly where it started out by the cow pasture checking on my cow friends and of course seeing my favorite cow Oreo who is often a painting subject of mine and a real blessing to my life so I hope you guys enjoyed this behind the scenes day in the life of an artist now it's time for me to get back to the easel as always friends happy and blessed painting